“How Much Schoolteachers Are Paid.” Orange = average monthly salary according to ONF survey, in rubles; blue = average monthly salary according to Rosstat (Russian State Statistics Service), in rubles. From top to bottom, the two sets of figures are provided for Moscow, Arkhangelsk Region, St. Petersburg, Moscow Region, Leningrad Region, Murmansk Region, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Orenburg Region, Volgograd Region, Vladimir Region, Voronezh Region, Pskov Region, Kostroma Region, and Rostov Region. The figures given are for the period January–March 2018. Courtesy of Vedomosti

A third of Russian schoolteachers do not know how their salaries are calculated or whether incentive payments and reimbursements are added to their paychecks. This was one finding of a survey carried out by the Russian People’s Front (ONF) in May 2018, during which researchers interviewed more than 3,000 teachers in 82 regions.

“Wage growth remains insignificant, making it impossible to attain the wage levels claimed by Rosstat,” the ONF concluded.

In Murmansk Region, for example, the survey showed teachers earned an average of ₽36,382 a month [approx. €495 a month], while official statistics showed they earned ₽50,560 a month [approx. €688 a month].

But even the salary the teachers earn comes at the price of an extremely heavy workload, the researchers stressed. The workload was heaviest in Kemerovo, Kostroma, and Samara Regions, where teachers averaged over thirty classes a week.

A quarter of schoolteachers have second jobs or hold additional positions at the same school, while twenty percent think of quitting the profession due to the heavy workload. Seven percent of the teachers surveyed spoke of not having been paid at all or paid in full at times. Twenty-three percent said their paychecks had been miscalculated, while fifty-seven percent had not been paid for overtime or additional duties.

Lyubov Dukhanina, deputy chair of the State Duma’s education committee and a member of the ONF’s central staff, argues the current nontransparent system of calculating salaries, which divides salaries into basic pay and incentive pay, should be abandoned. Instead, teachers should receive a guaranteed salary for their work. She also notes that, according to many teachers, incentive payments are unfair and opaque, and the amount of these payments can vary wildly from month to month.

Igor Remorenko, rector of Moscow State Pedagogical University and former deputy education minister, said all systems of compensation include guaranteed basic pay.

“In organizations undergoing reform, the lower the guaranteed basic pay, the better, because it enables you to rotate employees. In stable organizations, the constant part of the paycheck is more important, because it motivates employees. We need to move in the direction of having teachers sign annual contracts and feel confident in the future, while accepting the possibility of being paid different amounts depending on differing workloads from month to month,” said Remorenko.

“There are legal means of turning tiny salaries into big salaries on paper. For example, in Moscow, until 2018, the statistics included only full-time employees who had open-ended contracts, while the part-timers, who earned less money, were not included in the stats,” said Lukhovitsky.

According to Lukhovitsky, a law bill would be tabled in the State Duma this autumn that would establish a guaranteed minimum salary, equal to at least two minimum wages, for eighteen academic hours.

“It’s nice a large organization like the ONF has supported our conclusions four years after we started talking about going back to a fixed salary,” said Lukhovitsky.

Naturally, teachers are dissatisfied with their salaries. They are thus fertile ground for the ONF, argues political scientist Konstantin Kalachev. Teachers play a key role in elections and the entire political system.

[The ONF is a pro-Putin, astroturfed “populist” front organization. Teachers are critical to the Putin regime because many of them serve as polling station workers during elections, due to the fact that polling stations are commonly set up in schools. Teachers are thus often involved in the systematic vote rigging and electoral fraud that have helped keep Putin and his allies in power for twenty years—TRR.]

“The current system of governance sometimes needs to let off steam. There is nothing frightening about the fact the stats are fudged, and the president’s May decrees are not fully implemented. The president sets tasks, and if they are not solved that is the problem of the people trying to solve them,” said Kalachev.

It is pensioners, teachers, and physicians who have the most impact on approval ratings, “so it makes sense the powers that be are focused on worrying about teachers,” he concluded.